Empire of Crime

by Tim Newark

  The communists were aware of their own necessity to control public opinion and a document captured from them in South Perak revealed their concerns about legitimate targets. ‘It is strictly prohibited to throw grenades at public gatherings, such as theatres,’ said the translation, ‘where there is a risk of injuring bystanders and thus damaging the MCP’s reputation. But throwing a grenade in such places is justified if prominent British imperialists are present, and targets for grenade-throwing are bus companies, shops, individual traitors, British soldiers, police and other treacherous elements.’

  Psychological warfare was deployed against the communists and was run by a department close to the Malayan Special Branch. It used a variety of methods to broadcast propaganda, including loudspeakers linked up to aircraft, films, radio, press and field publicity teams. One dimension of this may well have been the widely publicised recruitment of native headhunters from Sarawak to fight alongside the British. Some 264 Iban trackers served with the Security Forces and they claimed magic charms among their armoury of weapons that could scare off evil spirits, as well as tigers.

  One journalist delighted in describing an Iban warrior in pursuit of communist guerrillas. ‘What he stressed most strongly,’ noted the reporter, ‘was his anger at having been prevented by the British officer from securing the head of the dead bandit as a trophy: without it, the whole significance of the pursuit and kill was lost.’ Several such stories were planted in the Malayan press.

  In June 1952, a memorandum from the Secretary for Defence officially decreed that the term ‘bandit’ was no longer to be used when referring to communist guerrillas. Instead, ‘It is accordingly proposed in future,’ said the announcement, ‘that the term “communist terrorist” will be the general designation for all members of these [communist] organisations.’ It meant the communists were no longer regarded as common law-breakers but had some ideological basis for their violent action.

  Commissioner Arthur Young left Malaya in 1953, but almost immediately he was sent to another colonial trouble spot in Africa, where he had to tackle the problems created by the Kenyan Mau Mau insurgency. In the meantime, his police reforms continued to pay dividends in Malaya, as the British began to turn the war in their favour.

  Jack Moran was a young lieutenant in the Royal Federation of Malaya Police Force. He was one of the officers split off from the regular police force by Commissioner Young to fight communist guerrillas in the jungle. He very much considered himself on the front-line and resented the lack of appreciation for his team’s work back home. He also wanted to dispel the idea that they were up against ill-armed raggedy bandits.

  ‘They are a highly trained and disciplined military force,’ he explained. ‘Its soldiers – one must call them that – are distributed throughout the Federation of Malaya in regiments, platoons, companies, sections and independent platoons; correctly dressed in an adapted uniform – commanded by officers who receive their orders from the Political Commissars – and in the main extremely well armed with weapons of all the latest patterns.’

  At the beginning of the Emergency, Moran recalled there were 15 of these communist regiments operating in the jungles of Malaya. Their camps were organised on military lines, even raising and lowering their flag at dawn and dusk. ‘I have seen one of those camps in the jungle. It had every detail from barracks – some married quarters, compound and school – down to a field hospital.’

  In addition to the uniformed guerrillas was the Min Yuen, the civilian supporters who provided food, shelter and information. ‘No one knows their true identity or who they are until some information given betrays them, and it is certain that the unsuspecting person brushes shoulders with Min Yuen agents every hour of the day.’

  The most dangerous dimension of the guerrilla force was its Killer Squads. Eliminations Lists were drawn up in the Communist Party headquarters and then distributed throughout the country. Alongside names of those who actively opposed the party were the names of civilians who had simply refused to give money or food to the communists.

  ‘Very few victims escape the Killer Squads,’ said Moran, ‘being hounded and finally executed quickly and methodically if it takes days, weeks, months or even years. The Killer Squads usually work in small groups of three or four men, and they show a preference for night operation. They are dressed in black shirts, trousers and rubber-soled shoes – ideal garb for night – and their armament is usually a knife, revolver or hand grenade, sufficient for their deadly purpose. There is no discrimination in the names on the Eliminations List. It can mean a Government official, police officer, soldier, schoolmaster, labourer or even housewife of any nationality.’

  Moran believed that the police were woefully under-prepared for their first months of combat against the communists. ‘The first police units, hurriedly drawn together, went into action wearing khaki uniforms, making themselves beautiful targets against the green of the jungle,’ he noted. They had to exchange their truncheons for carbines and Bren guns. The fighting, however, proved attractive to local Malays, who were keen to have their go at the Chinese communists, and they volunteered for service with the colonial police.

  The military level of combat encountered was described by police officer Peter Guest, who kept a journal of clashes with the communist terrorists (CTs). On one occasion, two police armoured cars were ambushed by communist guerrillas. It was meticulously planned. They had dug several shallow trenches at the bend of a road, so any approaching cars would have to slow down. When the first armoured car appeared, the terrorists opened fire, halting it so as to block the road for the second vehicle.

  Policemen swung open the rear doors of their vehicles and piled out onto the road, being protected by their armoured cars from most of the ambush fire coming from the trenches. Unfortunately, the communists had also grabbed positions on a bank overlooking the vehicles, so they could fire down at the police gunners.

  ‘As a Bren gunner in the armoured car was busy firing from the seat in the turret,’ recalled Guest, ‘there was a loud crack and he suddenly jerked back with a startled gasp, letting the Bren gun go. The driver looked across and saw that the gunner was clutching his neck and that his hands were covered in blood, as he had been shot through the neck. He was still alive, although in some distress and bleeding badly. With the gunner incapacitated, the driver went into reverse.’

  As a result of this ambush, police armoured vehicles were given extra steel plates to protect drivers from rounds coming from all directions. For Guest, payback time came when his unit received information that the local communists in Perak were about to receive a delivery of food. Guest and his ten-man squad decided to turn the tables on them by organising an ambush of their own.

  The encounter took place in an overgrown rubber plantation. The police scouts provoked fire from the ensnared communists, and Guest ran to gain the high ground. Taking up a position on a ridge, a major firefight broke out. Bullets smacked into the rubber trees around them, spraying them with plumes of latex. Guest replaced the magazine in his gun and ordered his policemen to advance. Dashing across open ground, he made for some cover.

  ‘As we headed for the bushes,’ he recalled, ‘it was a nasty surprise to see two uniformed CTs jump up just in front. The image is clear to this day. They were only 25 yards away, wearing jungle green uniforms with brown puttees [canvas leggings], and carrying large packs. As they ran I was struck by their odd gait, a knees-up sort of stride, as though they were picking their feet up over objects on the ground. I raised my carbine and took sight on the middle of the back of the second man. I squeezed two shots and knew both had hit him, as I saw the dust jump from his pack. But to my intense frustration, he just kept running!’

  Guest fired a third time and this time his man went down.

  Pressing on with their attack, Guest and his men got among the communists. At one point, he was only four yards away from a Chinese guerrilla and clearly saw the red star on his peaked cap. Firing his carbine from hi
s hip, he downed him with three shots. Running out of breath, Guest and his comrades threw themselves on the ground. Guest then unhitched a grenade and threw it into the bush.

  ‘By now the firing had stopped and it seemed ghostly quiet,’ said Guest. ‘I heard a comment to my right, looked across and there was one of my chaps [observing] a uniformed CT lying face down and unmoving.’ Wary that the guerrilla might only be faking death to entrap his men and blow them up as they approached, Guest shouted out at him, telling him not to try any tricks. Slowly, Guest wormed his way towards the communist until his carbine was pointing directly at the CT’s head. He could see that the man was wounded, but still alive.

  ‘He was Chinese with a thick mop of black hair and looked as if he was in his early twenties,’ remembered Guest, ‘which made him about my own age. I also noted that he was very well fed, suggesting he had not been back in the field very long after R&R over the border in Thailand.’

  The sound of firing withdrew, signalling that the rest of the communists had had enough. Keeping his prisoner covered, other policemen stripped him of his equipment. Guest then offered him a cigarette. Surprised by this kindness, the prisoner revealed that he was part of an eight-strong unit that had a reputation for being both professional and ruthless.

  As Guest and his men left the rubber plantation, he came across the body of the invincible communist he had shot at earlier. He opened up the man’s pack, which contained a tight roll of oilcloth.

  ‘When unwound, it had two .300 bullets imbedded in it,’ said Guest. ‘The same calibre as my M1 carbine. So, my two shots had hit his pack but had been stopped in the rolled oilcloth. He had been killed by a shot through the back of the head.’

  Many of the white police officers had not been long out of Britain when they arrived in the jungle of Malaya.

  ‘I was twenty-three, very green, and very scared,’ said Roy Follows when he first joined the Malayan police force. Armed with a Bren gun, he was given command of a village police post – a wooden shack reinforced with sandbags. Out in the rainforest around him lurked the communist 10th Regiment. Venturing out on a patrol, he stumbled upon a communist camp by mistake. Fortunately, the guerrillas were away and he picked up some haversacks containing valuable documents.

  ‘While I was rummaging through one of them,’ he remembered, ‘I came across a small tin containing some sort of powder. Before any of the men could stop me, I had tipped it out on the ground – how was I to know that it was opium!’

  Across the border in Thailand, the communists had ample opportunity to buy narcotics and the Triads were more than happy to keep them supplied. Opium was also a good currency for buying weapons.

  After eight months of learning on the job, Follows was transferred to a jungle company as a platoon commander. His first task was to bring back the victims of communist attacks. Many of these were Malay rubber workers who refused to pay the monthly subscriptions demanded by the communist gangs that lived in their territory.

  ‘When, on one of these grim sorties,’ said Follows, ‘I found that the man concerned had been mutilated and killed in the presence of his wife and son, I swore that, one day, I would make the CTs pay for their revolting crimes.’

  The opportunity came in August 1953 when Follows and his men intercepted a group of local guerrillas as they patrolled through a palm oil estate. Seeing them first, the police dropped to the ground and crawled towards them until they were just 50 yards away in the jungle undergrowth. At that point, they broke cover and charged them, the Malay policemen shouting, ‘Bunoh! Bunoh!’ – ‘Kill! Kill!’

  Firing several rounds from his carbine, Follows saw a guerrilla fall.

  ‘Coming upon a mortally wounded CT, I bent down to relieve him of his weapon,’ he recalled in his diary. ‘At that moment a sten-gunner, before I had the chance to stop him, fired a long burst at point-blank range into the man’s head. His skull made a horrifying sound as bullets blasted it open. Just like a small explosion, his head burst apart, particles of brain spattered into my face, but I didn’t care.’

  Moments later, a female guerrilla ran towards one of her dead comrades. Follows fired warning shots in her direction, but she ignored them, grabbing the dead man’s weapon. Follows fired at her, wounding her in the arm, but, despite letting out a blood-curdling scream, she carried on running into the jungle and escaped. Follows’ tally that day was four dead communists – none captured alive.

  ‘Callously, we flung the bullet-riddled CTs into the armoured car,’ said Follows. ‘Suddenly, the sight of their blood-soaked bodies filled me with disgust. I turned away and retched.’

  Just months earlier a police superintendent had warned him of the conditions he would face. ‘Grim. Bloody grim,’ he told Follows. ‘It’s a dirty, dangerous war.’

  The Malayan Emergency was a new kind of duty for colonial policemen and the casualty rates told their own story. Up to the end of 1956, 2,890 police officers were killed in action, against British military losses of 518. During the same period, the communists suffered casualties of nearly 12,000, more than half of which had been inflicted by the police, not the army. A shower of bravery awards followed – including 13 George Medals, the second-highest civil medal for valour after the George Cross – making the Malayan police the most decorated police force of their time.

  Organised crime was now wrapped up in the political machinations of the Cold War. It was difficult to tell the difference between freedom fighters and opportunist gangsters who attached themselves to guerrilla causes in order to gain political leverage and access to riches generated out of chaos. The confusion of the era would even catch out veteran drugs-investigators such as Harry J. Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

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  12

  THE WRONG-HEADED MR ANSLINGER

  AS THE BRITISH EMPIRE BATTLED against Malayan communists, chief US drugs-buster Harry J. Anslinger watched developments in communist China with rising fury. In theory, the communist victory over the nationalists in 1949 should have seen an end to the illicit opium trade that had been run by the Japanese and the nationalists hand-in-hand with the Triads. Certainly, this was what retired imperial drugs investigator Russell Pasha had hoped for.

  ‘Now that the war is finished and victory won,’ he wrote in 1949, ‘we can leave China to deal with the Japanese poisoners who have deliberately ruined so many of her peasants: their methods will be drastic, but the punishment will fit the crime.’

  The Japanese may well have been punished, but, as far as Anslinger was concerned, opium and its derivatives were assets too costly and influential for the communists to ignore. In April 1953, the long-serving head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) stood up in the United Nations and gave full vent to his view that communist China was now a major player in the illicit drugs business and she was doing her best to flood the western world with narcotics.

  ‘Large quantities of heroin are manufactured in communist China, all the way from Tsingtao and Tientsin down to Canton,’ he told the UN delegates. ‘In one factory alone in western China the capacity is 300 lb per day and all of this is for export.’

  ‘At the time the communists occupied Shensi,’ continued Anslinger, ‘the district was barren and unproductive, so the communists depended on the cultivation and sale of opium to finance their vast military administration.’

  But this was not the only reason why communist China was gearing up its production of narcotics: it was a primary weapon in the Cold War, being fought between East and West, argued Anslinger.

  ‘There can be little doubt of the true purposes of Communist China in the organised sale of narcotics,’ he said. ‘These purposes include monetary gain, financing political activities in various countries, and sabotage. The Communists have planned well and know a well-trained soldier becomes a liability and a security risk from the moment he first takes a shot of heroin.’

  The communist world was in uproar when it heard this accusation, and Russian an
d Eastern European delegates, as well as the Chinese, threw back their own criticism of US underhand politics. But they weren’t the only ones to be outraged by Anslinger’s claims – so were the British. A key part of the Chinese communist drugs network was said to be British Hong Kong, from whence shipments of Chinese narcotics went to Malaya, the Philippines, Hawaii and the United States, ending up in California, where it was corrupting a new generation of young Americans.

  The FBN estimated that some 670 tons of raw opium was being produced and stored in southern China, with at least four tons of it passing every month through Hong Kong on to the Pacific Rim. British newspapers sympathetic to Anslinger’s Cold War stance picked up on these claims. Former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee was criticised for touring communist China in 1954 and being too credulous in believing their statements that drug use had disappeared from the country.

  At first, the British government took a cynical approach to Anslinger’s accusations. A note from the British Embassy in Washington DC said that ‘a good deal of the information in Mr Anslinger’s statement was furnished by Nationalist Chinese sources’. The defeated Kuomintang had a very good reason for denying their own trade in illicit drugs and shifting the blame to the Communists. On top of this, British diplomats considered that ‘Mr Anslinger is under pressure in Washington and having to fight to keep his job, partly because of his lack of success in combating juvenile delinquency in the US and partly for domestic political reasons.’

  It was the height of McCarthyism and Anslinger had to parade his anti-Red credentials as openly as any other senior government figure. British Foreign Office bureaucrats could also recognise the need of a fellow civil servant to justify his taxpayer-funded budget. However, as Anslinger continued to quote examples of Chinese communist drug consignments intercepted in Hong Kong, the embarrassment level became too high for the British to ignore.

  Behind the scenes, negotiations resulted in a more conciliatory approach from Anslinger and the FBN. In April 1954, the State Department told the British Embassy in Washington DC that the FBN chief would repeat in the next session of the Narcotics Commission his attacks on the smuggling of narcotics from communist China to the United States, via Hong Kong, but Anslinger would be careful to say nothing derogatory about the government of Hong Kong and declare that they were making diligent efforts to suppress the traffic.